In the Tom Cruise dramady Cocktail, we learn a series of rules for life and business. Coughlin’s Laws are eponymous with their creator, Doug Coughlin (played by Bryan Brown).
Who was Doug Coughlin? Well, according to the man himself, he was a “Logical Negativist. Flourished in the last part of the 20th century. Propounded a set of laws the world generally ignores, to its detriment.”
Coughlin’s Laws were as follows:
- Drink or be gone.
- Anything else is always something better.
- Never show surprise. Never lose your cool.
- Never tell tales about a woman. No matter how far she is, she’ll hear you.
- Bury the dead, they stink up the joint. As far as the rest of Coughlin’s Laws, ignore them. The guy was always full of shit.
These rules are pretty good. And we’ll keep a few. But we’ll fold them into our own set of rules – The Rules of Relaxed Success.
As we go on our journey to find “Buffett,” there will be a few that appear here or there. But know that they are all collected here.
As a general rule, the lifestyle we seek is… relaxed. As it so happens, along my journey, the one you’re now on with me… I uncovered the rules. And I’ve applied them as I found them to my own life. To great success.
And to that end, I’ll lay at your feet, our first Relaxed Rule of Success…
Be Patient and Let the Game Come to You.
In 1964, Jimmy Buffett decided to learn guitar… to pick up girls. That led to the formation of a band. And a six-night-a-week rotation at various Bourbon Street clubs and bars. In 1970, he made his recording debut. The folk-rock album “Down to Earth” was objectively a flop – selling only 324 copies.
In 1977, Jimmy peaked at number two on the country charts with the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes… thirteen years after he took the daring leap to learn to strum a six-string. A year later, the song Margaritaville peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.
It wasn’t until 1985 that the first Margaritaville opened. Seven years passed between the time the song became a hit until he took action to further monetize it.
In 2004, fifty years after he learned to play guitar, Jimmy had his first and only number one album on the Billboard Top 200.
From then until today, more than 50 years have passed. Today, he plays for tens of thousands at his live shows and has a net worth of almost $550 million (in 2016). Of course, you might think that’s from only playing music. And you’d be wrong. But more on that later.
The moral is that his musical and financial success didn’t happen overnight. And my guess is that if you’d have asked 1964 Jimmy Buffet – or even 1978 Jimmy Buffett – if the 2021 Jimmy Buffett would be one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, owning hotels, resorts, and restaurants, he’d have looked at you funny.
My own path has its own storyline and plot.
I left Kannapolis, North Carolina in 1995 to attend Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut to play baseball. We didn’t have enough money for me to be able to have a non-paid internship on Wall Street like some. And not enough money to play in a college summer baseball league.
I went home to work every summer. I sold and moved office furniture from a little store in downtown K-Vegas (as we liked to call Kannapolis). I enjoyed it. It was with friends, and there wasn’t any real pressure.
So much so, that after college I went back to work there. And, in all honesty, it was for a girl. That girl, however, lived in Nashville and was in graduate school at Vanderbilt. The office furniture gig allowed me to drive out to see her every other weekend. While my friends were training to be titans on Wall Street, I was seeing about a girl.
Two years later, after she graduated, we were married. And I eventually pursued a fifteen-year career at Bank of America in Charlotte. When I left, I was a Senior Vice President and Director of Research and Analytics for the Corporate Real Estate Division.
The way I left is a story for another time, but suffice it to say, a career tied to a desk and a chair shoved behind a keyboard was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be free. I was financially stable, but I was miserable.
So I started my own consulting business. Working when I want. For who I want. From where I want. And I have enough money to never worry too much about anything. But I still haven’t found it, just yet. I’m getting closer. The older I get, the wiser I get. And the closer I get to Finding Buffett. I just have to continue to be patient and let the game come to me.